Graceling - Kristin Cashore (#1 - Graceling Realm)

"I'm not going to wear a red dress," she said.

"It would look stunning, My Lady," she called.
She spoke to the bubbles gathered on the surface of the water. "If there's anyone I wish to stun at dinner, I'll hit him in the face." 





Title: Graceling
Author: Kristin Cashore
Genres: Young adult, fantasy

In a world where people born with an exceptional skill, known as a Grace, are both feared and exploited, Katsa carries the burden of a skill even she despises: the Grace of killing.

Feared by the court and shunned by those her own age, the darkness of her Grace casts a heavy shadow over Katsa’s life. 

Yet she remains defiant: when the King of Lienid’s father is kidnapped she investigates, and stumbles across a mystery. Who would want to kidnap the old man, and why? And who was the extraordinary Graced man whose fighting abilities rivalled her own? 

The only thing Katsa is sure of is that she no longer wants to kill. The intrigue around this kidnapping offers her a way out – but little does she realise, when she takes it, that something insidious and dark lurks behind the mystery. Something spreading from the shadowy figure of a one-eyed king...

The Grace have different coloured eyes, like heterochromia. Katsa is feared as she killed one of her relatives in court when she was eight accidentally because he was being inappropriate and she felt threatened. Her uncle, the king of this kingdom uses her to scare or kill anyone who has crossed him, and she being the niece of the king, has to obey.

Katsa

She’s the heroine. She's strong, admirable, feared, she doesn’t really have that many friends because of her Grace to kill but she does have a few, she's has a temper, she doesn’t want children, she refuses to marry, bladeedah.

So she's all like ‘I'm not going to ever marry, ugh’, but then (surprise, surprise) she falls in love and then she's all, ‘I love you but I don’t want to marry you because it’ll mean that I’ll be yours forever.’ Like, is she expecting herself to cheat on him with other guys? Guess what she does when she finally figures out that she's in love with Po? Cries. 

Then she gets really mad at her uncle, King Randa, for using her as savage when SHE HAS THE POWER TO KILL. She could've easily threatened to kill him if she hated torturing other people on her uncle's behalf so much.

I think the idea of the Graced was very original but I couldn’t help comparing the idea of the seven kingdoms to the Game of Thrones' seven kingdoms.

OVERALL, it was a clever, fun idea , interesting, smart and very descriptive sometimes even too descriptive, and not enough action. I wasn't too fond of Katsa, but I liked other characters like Po and Raffin

Rate out of 5: ☆☆☆ 

-C E L I N E